Unemployment benefits and job match quality

Lecture by Prof. Konstantinos Tatsiramos 

"Unemployment benefits and job match quality - Do unemployment benefits help those seeking work to obtain better jobs?"

Unemployment insurance schemes face a well-known trade-off between providing income support to those out of work and reducing their incentive to look for work. This trade-off between benefits and incentives is central to the public debate about extending benefit periods during the recent economic crisis. Often overlooked in this debate is that such support can increase the quality of the work found by the unemployed. This lecture will discuss the mechanisms through which unemployment insurance can lead to better jobs and present the existing empirical evidence from various countries.